


Chain of Causation

by Ransomedbard



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Resurrection, Supernatural - Freeform, brief mentions of violence and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ransomedbard/pseuds/Ransomedbard
Summary: High in the isolated mountain foothills of India, Wufei has fallen in battle. When the guardian spirit of the land finds his body, it is being guarded by a powerful dragon.The spirit learns of the ancient bond between the Long clan and the spirit dragons, the destruction of their colony, and the lengths the remaining dragons will go to preserve one of the last survivors.





	Chain of Causation

The guardian spirit of this barren, wind-swept patch of mountain foothills was ancient, genderless and nameless. The lands under its care had never been settled by man. In times past, traders and hunters had occasionally dared the rocky slopes; once or twice a small army had passed under the spirit's watchful eye. But all that had ended long ago. Even the single human footpath which had once wound through its domain was now so decrepit that the stone markers had worn away. So too the spirit’s once vigilant watch had fallen into an endless gentle rhythm of seasons and cycles, year blurring into year. Until one waning night, as it swept over scrubby pines and foxholes and found a battle - or what was left of one.

The race of man had finally come again. The spirit was amazed that they had somehow brought with them great metal statues, much larger than themselves. The statues appeared to be partially hollow, and cunningly wrought so as to be able to move, though they were all broken now. Some had been ripped apart or smashed into the mountainside; others lay flat. The ground was pitted and burnt around them. The spirit trailed over the statues curiously, touching their varied forms, puzzling at the cold light that still shone deep within a few of them.

All the men and women it found lay dead, inside and around their statues. The spirit grieved for them. For millennia now it had given prayer to the passing of all things in its quiet domain, a solemn self-appointed office. Although there were none there to witness it, it took on a more human form. It draped itself in flowing robes and recalled again the words and gestures, drawn from the memory of a small band of monks that had passed through ages ago and buried one of their own under a cairn.

Over each of the fallen it ministrated silently, only touching the earth long enough to gather a few motes of the mountain’s pure stone to scatter on their forms. This would most likely be the first of many prayers it performed for them, for few left its crags after falling there, and it would continue to visit from time to time until their forms fell back into dust.

It was almost dawn when it drifted away from the last of the fallen, only to find at a distance from the rest another enormous metal statue, kneeling in a small stand of sparse pine. Not far from it, the body of its man lay face up. He had been crawling, it seemed, before he came to his end.

Hovering over the dead man there was a long dragon, hidden in folds of dark cloud. The dragon was hazy, hard to perceive; by the force of its will it was obscuring itself and its true nature. Under its clouds, the rain was falling steadily. The body of the man the dragon was watching over was already half buried in thick yellow mud.

Between the two there was a slight distortion, almost an area of lower pressure, as if they were drawn to each other. The spirit had heard of this from the East - some clans of man had forged special bonds with powerful forces in ages past, which endured from generation to generation. Apparently even now some persisted.

The mountain spirit approached closer, but the dragon paid it no heed. It stopped a respectful distance from the head of the dragon and bowed, then waited. No reply came; the dragon remained wholly fixated on the body. Very well - it still had a task to perform. The spirit moved forward again to the body and arranged itself to begin its prayers. That finally prompted a reaction.

When the dragon spoke, her voice was a screeching cacophony, metal sliding against metal. The sound was irrelevant as the spirit could discern meaning, but their ways of thinking were very different, so it understood the dragon’s words imperfectly.

“This has not-dead.”

The spirit stilled the shuffle of the prayer beads it held in its manifold hands, and once again turned to the dragon. It focused for a moment so as to project its thoughts as clearly as possible past their language barrier.

“Indeed, he will transmigrate and will be reborn.”

The dragon maintained her singular focus on the dead body below, but she made a harsh sound of negation. When she spoke again, her voice was almost unbearably sharp, like thunder ripping a hot, dry sky.

“This has not-dead, as coming consciousness.”

The spirit floated silently for a few minutes, attempting to unravel that. What could the dragon mean? She could not think this man would return to life, could she? By the looks of it, he was several hours dead. No trace of a soul remained inside.

The body below grew colder and paler as the frigid rain lashed it, making a mockery of her devotion. She floated above, gently twisting in a constant, steady undulation, obscured in cloud, gazing down.

The spirit did not have to say anything; it could simply move on, or even proceed with its prayers unheeding. But this was a rare chance to impart something of that gift of insight that had started it on the path so long ago, when that Worthy had traversed its mountain foothills and proclaimed the Teaching to even the rocks and wind. This dragon was bound by bonds of attachment to an illusion. Though she did not know it, she was perpetuating the cycle of her own suffering. Perhaps the spirit could help, in some small way, to set her free.

It composed itself again and addressed the dragon with calm, clear words:

“Upon death, the individual components of a consciousness scatter into their most minute fundamental atoms. When rebirth occurs, a new consciousness is formed by a coalescing of those particles.” The spirit sank low near the ground and gestured with many arms to the fallen man, who it now noticed was young, almost still a boy. “This is but a body. There is no more individual left, no enduring soul.”

She finally ceased her vigil then, raising her head from the body below her, and looked full at the spirit. Suddenly it could discern more of the dragon; she was pushing away the obscuring rain clouds and the barriers between them fell.

She was a Shenlong, a spirit dragon. Her form was blue, but so utterly deep that she was almost as black as the night sky; her scales were a river of reflected starlight. All along her spine and horns were thin flares, white coronas of vented spiritual energy. A matriarch of her kind, terrible in her overwhelming strength, she was; it had never seen the like.

Holding the spirit in her eyes, she flung her thoughts at it, projecting them in a seething, chaotic torrent so powerful that it threatened to overwhelm and destroy. But the guardian spirit was supremely grounded; its essence like the mountains from which it sprang. It remained steadfast through the onslaught, letting the dragon’s memories and sensations wash over it.

Foremost was the raw trauma of a recent, cataclysmic loss. Each memory after that echoed and amplified the searing pain.

Her predecessor was the one who had made the pact with a small human clan on the brink of annihilation by their oppressive neighbors. By the time this matriarch had risen to command, the people were already prosperous and free. During her rule, which had already stretched over many human lifetimes, she had magnified their success. As a result the human clan had flourished and grown in number beyond anything the mountain spirit had ever seen.

But despite her care, the communication between the corporeal and the spiritual clans had waned over time, even though their pact still stood as strong as ever, tying their fates together. There had always been a fundamental gap due to their separate natures. The dragons could perceive much, even the hearts of man, but influence little of the physical world; and in turn they could seldom be directly seen or heard by human ears or eyes. To consult with the dragons required the trances of shamans, the divination of oracles burning turtle shells. But as the centuries piled up, old ways were forgotten. The rituals that remained became ossified and hidebound, the minds of the humans more closed to contact. The name of their clan - Long, the Dragon Clan - became more and more only a name, the dragons on their banners and wax seals only a symbol.

Then came a sudden change; a great migration of the entire clan, uprooting from places near and far. The guardian spirit struggled to understand where they had gone. It was as if the humans had risen up, gone out to live in the night sky - had somehow left the world itself behind! The dragons had had no choice but to follow, but the change had not left them unscathed. Leaving behind the harmony of balanced elements for the void and the stars, they became strangely bright, but brittle; surrounded by metal, they became rigid and quick to anger.

The dragon’s memories showed the spirit what had become their new home: a massive city of huge buildings that had no sky of its own, only more city rising up before and behind, as if built inside the curve of a wheel.

The pain in the memories reached a crescendo. Suddenly the human city was overflowing with death, perceived by an endless stream of minds and eyes - death seen through the eyes of the women and men, and floating high above them, by spirit dragons. First came bright orange flames that expanded strangely high and wide, eating up life; then sudden, impossible cold had come in and killed the rest.

Appalled at the scale of the carnage, the spirit’s guardian instincts awakened; its aura took on a dangerous aspect. Without thinking it pressed her mind. “Who? Who has done this?”

Her reply was a roar, almost incoherent with smouldering rage. 

“Them-selves!”

And within that answer was the source of her agony - the human clan’s terrible betrayal of their pact with the spirit dragons.

The humans had been bonded, each to each with a dragon; and the head of the clan to the matriarch herself. The last head of the human clan was born in that city floating in the void. Perhaps that was what had twisted him; or perhaps he was only the inevitable last step in the slow atrophy of the spiritual bond. He utterly disbelieved and rejected the existence of the Shenlong and the pact. Upon taking up his office he had forbidden the ancient rites, chained closed the gates of the shrines, and silenced the few remaining shamans. Cut off, the matriarch could do nothing to get through to him. Surrounded by empty golden statues of dragons, he ignored the real one that could speak to his soul.

Thus, she had been powerless to stop him as his thoughts turned ever darker; could only watch as the council of elders he lead followed him into despair.

The result was a double atrocity. The humans had chosen to end their whole city, and with it, their own lives. But the terrible blow had fallen on the dragons too, devastating the mighty brood. As the last memory faded, the mountain spirit felt how the matriarch perceived her family now: thin, faint, drained almost to the point of non-existence. It was her strength and will alone that sustained them.

It was clear now why she had been concealing herself - her powers, great as they might be, were being strained to the limit. The spirit could sense the ocean of power housed within her, pouring out in an endless profusion of gossamer ties to her flight.

And those spiritual ties were all vibrating and contracting, presaging some tremendous arrival - a response to her irresistible summons by those bound to her. The spirit turned and gasped.

Racing against and easily beating the rising sun, a writhing blue wave was breaking out of the clouds all along the horizon. Arcing across the sky, in multitudes uncountable, the dragons of the clan of Long were returning, each with a tiny atom of shining soul clutched to its heart. The spirit was awestruck at the sight.

Almost instantly they are upon her. So many shapes overlap hers, but they take up no space; like a thousand times ten thousand shadows, they only obscure her, eclipse her into utter blackness. All the spirit can see is the growing ball of bright pinpoints streaming in to her outstretched hands.

She takes control and compacts the minute fragments, drawing them into her chest, and forges them together in the deep, crushing pressure of her watery heart. This moment of creation is too profound, too sacred; the spirit has to look away.

When it looks again, she is holding a complete soul in her clawed grip. She is letting it fall, so slowly now, onto the body of the boy-man that lies in the chill mud below. It sinks into the body noiselessly. The horde of shadowy dragons linger in the air. The silence is unbearable.

She thrashes her tail, and a whip crack of lightning rises from the ground to meet the bolt flying off her extended claw, striking at the body’s heart.

“SCION OF LONG!“ she thunders, and it isn’t a title, but a command, an invocation. Below, the soul shudders in response, fluttering against the ribs, trying to break free.

Suddenly, the spirit feels great fear. What is happening is deeply wrong, twisted; not a miracle, but a duty - or a punishment. There are bonds of attachment here, but they do not bind the dragon above; they chain the man below.

Unheeded by the matriarch, the shadows of the myriad dragons are twisting cruelly like ash on the dawn wind; they are melting as the first rays of the sun break over the hills. The soul is firmly confined in the body now. It draws its first breath.

The spirit is staggered by what it has just witnessed. The natural order has been overturned, cast down by the sheer power and determination of her will. And not just once - it can tell this is not the first time she has wrenched this man’s soul back from disparition. She floats, triumphant, eyes once again focused solely on the man below as the sunrise creeps over his face and his skin takes on the flush of life.

In hushed tones, the spirit asks her:

“How many more times will you do this to him?”

As she sinks back into the concealment of her clouds, she answers:

“As many ever takes.”

In the mud, the man rose.

**Author's Note:**

> This story includes some concepts from Buddhism, Hinduism and Chinese folklore and religion; absolutely no disrespect is intended.
> 
>   * ‘Worthy’ = Arhat; in some schools of Buddhism, a being that will attain Nirvana upon death.
>   * ‘Chain of Causation’ = in Buddhism, how ignorance, craving, birth and death perpetuate each other.
> 

> 
> ————
> 
> What does the Matriarch want of Wufei? I think she is far craftier than I am, and has come up with a plan to restore the power of her brood; a plan in which Wufei will play some unwitting role as the head of the Long clan. I don’t think she cares much about his wants or ideals at this point; she sees him primarily as a means to an end, although I suspect she is underestimating him. 
> 
> There’s one thing for sure: she has almost nothing left to lose.


End file.
